I'm Trying to create a Queen of Pain set, i'm starting with a viper helm, my intention is to create a long hair version for her inside the viper spine
but i'm having trouble with the number of polygons, i've just started to create the helm and there are 400 polygons already:
[hero+items: 6-7k for the portrait and 3-4k triangles in the game]
Queen of pain has about 4.5k polygons (lod0), so i still have 2.5k polygons to work

I don't want to worry you too much, but I think you're forgetting the other parts of her. I see you're replacing her hair so I'll omit that, but there's still the wings, shoulder pads and weapon to think about, if your item was to be put into game, these other items would still be there. That comes to 6,132 triangles (3,964+1,236+556+376). I think most of the spine won't be very visible, is it possible to turn most of that into alphas?

Largs, the spines are way too small - greatly reduce their number and scale them WAY up. These models are gonna be seen from a bird's eye view, so what you currently have will just degenerate into a bunch of shimmery pixels.

so i'll have to do less and bigger spines? that was planned but for the lod1 version..
now i'm thinking do I have to create all itens for lod0 it's used in portrait, belt won't appear, or lod0 is used in the item menu too?!

I don't want to worry you too much, but I think you're forgetting the other parts of her. I see you're replacing her hair so I'll omit that, but there's still the wings, shoulder pads and weapon to think about, if your item was to be put into game, these other items would still be there. That comes to 6,132 triangles (3,964+1,236+556+376). I think most of the spine won't be very visible, is it possible to turn most of that into alphas?

My blender show me just 4,5k Faces, and her other itens were hidden on the ss, i'll have to optimize model, I'll do the spines in alpha

The maximum tri counts budget for hero+items being LOD0 7,000 and LOD1 3,000.

Enchantress' LOD0 model alone is 6,600 Polys! Enchantress + my Helmet barely scratches the budget at 6,920 polys. To even attempt to make anything else would just pile on more polys on the budget. I guess i could try to make really, really, optimized models but that would be a challenge in itself. And that polycount isn't including the spear whose LOD0 is 1,140 polys? So that plus the original Enchantress model exceeds the 7,000 poly budget. Huh?

Here's hoping Valve gets a SDK/Documentation out to iron out all these concerns.

If the head itself is a bodygroup, I recommend that you swap out the whole head as part of your replacement and optimize/delete all of the geometry that is not visible under the helmet. I did that with my Kunkka set, and it spared me a ton of verts that I was able to apply to his accessories.

This is my first time posting here but I figured this would be a good place to start. This is a concept I'm working with on Omni Knight, mostly just a block out to give me a general idea of silhouette and form. The weapon will be definitely see changes in the future and ill be adding accessories and maybe some angel wings coming out of the helmet. The shoulders are just to eyeball what style may look good with the overall look. I just started this tonight so hopefully you'll be seeing regular updates.

Quick question to anyone using Blender, how do I apply the original hero's texture so that he's not green/pink/blue or whatever while I'm editing him? I couldn't think of the right question to google. Would be much appreciated.

@up
Thats what I needed to do with Dazzle. You go to the UV/Image Editor, open heroname_color.tga, in 3D View select hero model and go to edit mode, select all and in UV/Image Editor move UV to match loaded texture.

So here's what i made for Dazzle so far. Only problem i have now is that it have 1696 tris, I think i could bring it down a bit but I'll never get near 250/500 tris. Only option for me is if it would take 2 slots (like some TF2 hats blocking some accesories). Do you think it's possible?

@up
Thats what I needed to do with Dazzle. You go to the UV/Image Editor, open heroname_color.tga, in 3D View select hero model and go to edit mode, select all and in UV/Image Editor move UV to match loaded texture.

So here's what i made for Dazzle so far. Only problem i have now is that it have 1696 tris, I think i could bring it down a bit but I'll never get near 250/500 tris. Only option for me is if it would take 2 slots (like some TF2 hats blocking some accesories). Do you think it's possible?

I gotta say it's a good idea for dazzle, but a christian cross seems out of place in a fantasy universe. This is something you've come to expect in our world, but I doubt it has a place in their fictional universe.
You could try some kind of other marking or some sort of banner, and then make the coffin a bit more warcraft-y.
I like the skull icon on his chest, though.

This was helpful up until my StudioCompiler decided to just close itself without error when I chose output location and if entered manually it just crashes when I hit extract. :(

I had a nightmare trying to get studiocompiler to cooperate. I was having exactly the same problem as you but on maybe the 20th time of repeatedly hitting extract and the program closing, it finally (and completely randomly) decided to work.

So I guess you have to ask yourself... how badly do you really want it? :D

@up
Thats what I needed to do with Dazzle. You go to the UV/Image Editor, open heroname_color.tga, in 3D View select hero model and go to edit mode, select all and in UV/Image Editor move UV to match loaded texture.

So here's what i made for Dazzle so far. Only problem i have now is that it have 1696 tris, I think i could bring it down a bit but I'll never get near 250/500 tris. Only option for me is if it would take 2 slots (like some TF2 hats blocking some accesories). Do you think it's possible?

Floating geometry (the cross should not be physically connected to the casket), normal maps, take down the edgeloops in some areas on the rope, and don't make so spherical. You could probably honestly get away with squares.

If you want, I could try to optimize it if you could send me the .blend.